Barsoum: Affirming Oxycodone trafficking conviction and sentence

In U.S. v. Barsoum, No. 13-10710 (Aug. 15, 2014), the Court affirmed the conviction and sentence of a defendant convicted of unlawfully dispensing Oxycodone out of several pharmacies. The Court rejected Barsoum’s challenge to the number of pills for which he was held accountable at sentencing. The Court found no clear error in the district court’s estimate of the number of pills, based on average frequency and the number of pills Barsoum sold over a one-year period. The Court also rejected the argument that statements should not have admitted as non-hearsay co-conspirator statements under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d). The Court found that the testimony at issue did not relay any out-of-court statement and therefore was not hearsay. Further, the government had sufficiently established the existence of a conspiracy for purposes of Rule 801(d), and the statements at issue were made in furtherance of this conspiracy.